I don't care too much for money.

Malkavian

Money can't buy me love.

ClockworkUniverse

Saw it coming.

RedEyedAbyss

I think it can buy lust, though.

MillerCross

It can't buy lust. But it certainly can buy sex. 

Gelzo

Funny how the people who say this generally have money.

MadassAlex

I don't care too much for money, and I'm unemployed. If I wasn't, I'd be working class.

Malkavian

^^Unemployed, brah.

Stormtroper

Money gets you and your family health, education, other forms of personal growth and the free time to spend on them.

Gelzo

I have to say, there probably isn't an amount of money that would make me unhappy unless it was large enough to make a sizable difference in the world and haunt me if it was used incorrectly.

Which I guess might happen to an extent even if I had a salary just above what the middle class generally gets. I consider myself pretty frugal, and I sometimes get mild guilt trips when I end up consuming non-essential goods. Seeing beggars on the street every day I leave campus doesn't help.

On the other hand, I certainly trust myself to spend money wisely more than quite a few people I can think of.

vandro

I hate money, it binds people to do what they don't like for the sake of food and shelter, which should be a right of every human.

MadassAlex

Also, what Vandro said.

Gelzo

Until we're living in a post-scarcity world, you're going to have to

MadassAlex

Or socialism.

The thing about socialism is that it uses the surplus created by modern industrial technology to create a state of effective post-scarcity where we use our current resources to efficiently produce further surplus, supported by continuous scientific progress.

It also ensured a level of political and social comfort with post-scarcity lifestyles that would enable a post-scarcity society to work. Imagine if we emerged into post-scarcity from capitalism. There'd be a long period of enforced scarcity where corporations struggle to maintain their relevance. Kind of like how monarchies struggled to maintain their relevance after the advent of industrialisation, which killed feudal society dead forever.

Gelzo

That sort of thing is already kind of happening with media, come to think of it. It often isn't hard to get as many copies of a file as you want for free, and some companies have had to scramble to adjust.

I dunno if socialism would be all that great on a grander scale for a large modern nation, but I can't object to social programs that provide the bare minimum for survival to people who couldn't provide for themselves, and we already have some of those.

vandro

With capitalism post-scarcity will never come, it thrives on a demand with a supply that's left in check. Too much supply is  bad for it.

Gelzo

Wait, what?

I don't think that's how it works... People will always want more stuff. Companies don't stop producing if there's not enough demand for one thing, they just switch to what there's more demand for.

MadassAlex

Large companies also produce surplus to ensure that all outlets are well-supplied. This means that large amounts of resources are wasted on producing low-cost technology sold at a high price to support distribution of such products, all in the name of competing effectively with other companies that do the same.

This is a large quantity of wasted resources on dead weight products. Socialism helps move towards post-scarcity by altering industrial production for human need rather than corporate need. The chances are that under socialism, technology brands would die and such products would become uniform. On the other hand, the saved resources can easily be used to provide consumers with the highest possible grade technology while still saving most of those resources and putting them towards more immediate human requirement.

With this level of efficiency, we can make all of our planet first-world without placing undue strain on the earth itself. It's just that, currently, being a first-world citizen means that your lifestyle is brought to you at huge resource expense compared to what you actually have.

vandro

That's not how it ideally works, but then, greedy people exist that only care about short-term profitability, Gelzo.

Gelzo

It's not a question of short-term greediness. If you just stop producing, you don't make money, and there's always going to be demand for some good or service.

I could be missing something here?

ninjaclown

I just want money so I can afford snacks whenever I want. I don't care about high cost stuff at all.

MillerCross

^

captainbrass

Yes, that's basically my attitude, although in my case "snacks" extends to just the basics of life like food, heating, rent, travel and so on. Of course, my basic is pretty luxurious by the standards of a Somalian refugee, but there you go. I'm not bothered about having lots of fancy gadgets or living in a mansion or whatever.

Ironweaver

Money can buy you nice stuff. Nice stuff can make you happy. If you have enough of it, you can also use it to make others happy. Sure, some may say that money is bad and doesn't make people happy, but the crippled beggar on the street near you begs to differ.

Also, there are practical reasons why pure Marxist socialism would never work, for reasons Gelzo already mentioned and many others you must have heard of, including human nature, et cetera, et cetera. Even if it, through magic or whatever, manages to succeed, it would end as a disaster. People need struggle to motivate them, as well as a reward for their creative endeavors. A hypothetical society without those factors would quickly become stagnant, decadent and opressive. It would collapse upon itself. Complete equality can never be achieved.

vandro

He wants money becuase he needs it for food, which shouldn't be a need but a given.

I am perfectly aware human nature gets in the way, but it doesn't mean one cannot try to make a socialist society, now I take issue at the thought of struggle as motivational tool, if someone cannot or wishes not to be productive without the issue of loans, debts or simple day-to-day spendings, they do not deserve jack shit.

RedEyedAbyss

"Human nature"

I'd argue that a significant portion of human nature is actually human nurture. After all, would people be so motivated to consume and consume without advertisers constantly associating products with lifestyles and their other devious tricks?

Also, I think the bigger problem with Marxist socialism is the fact that it requires a dictatorship stage to indoctrinate everyone into Marxism.

Vivi

I want money so I can live comfortably as well as have stuff that interests me.

Icalasari

^^ I personally believe greed is a base instinct for pretty much every species

Anyways, I know socialism and communism works on a small scale - there is one town that runs perfectly using these. Whole countries always seem too hard to pull this off with, however

RedEyedAbyss

"I personally believe greed is a base instinct for pretty much every species"

I think this highlights an issue I tend to have with political debate. People tend to put too much weight on their opinions regarding stuff such as "human nature" without supplying (in this case) sociological evidence for such a claim. Though from what I've seen, sociologists tend to argue over human nature a lot themselves.

Icalasari

^ I'm not sure if you're using me as an example of what you hate or applauding me for saying, "Personally", thus implying that I know it is an opinion

RedEyedAbyss

Eh, only pain lies in the direction of taking things too personally in political argument, so no, it's not you so much as it is your argument. Let me put it this way: the polar ice caps don't stop melting just because someone doesn't believe in climate change.

vandro

Greed is not a natural instinct, you are mistaking the development of the concept of mine being faster than the development of the concept of theirs for a natural predisposition to want.